


BATTLE BORN

by wajjs



Series: 8th circle of hell [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Culture, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Galra Culture, Gen, Kolivan (Voltron) Backstory, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-War, Slow To Update, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-05-27 01:10:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15013424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wajjs/pseuds/wajjs
Summary: Perhaps there will be a time you don't lose everything.But that time isn't now.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> When they knock you down  
>  _You're going to get back on your feet_  
>  _(And you can't stop now)_  
>  _When they break your heart_  
>  _When they cause your soul to mourn_  
>  _Remember what I said_  
> [ _Boy you was battle born_ ](https://youtu.be/zPJQQeeYDYI)
> 
> I've started writing this on September of 2017 and you'd think that by now it would be another story to be counted in the "finished" group. But... well, I never really finished this story. It's one of those many projects I have that I work in whenever I'm too stressed or feeling worse than what I consider to be 'normal', and so I allow myself to be free with my words and let them _be_.
> 
> Originally I was never going to share this story with anyone, because I thought no one would be interested. But then I shared it with Mizu, who's the greatest person ever and someone who helps me a lot daily, as well as never judges me when it comes to strange inspirations for stories. And then I talked about this story with more people, and suddenly I grew much too fond of it, which is what ultimately led to my choice of sharing it now.  
> 
> Kolivan is a character that I fear isn't well liked within the VLD fandom, even though fellow kolifans exist (and they are all awesome!). I have to say that I fell in love with Kolivan as a character the moment he appeared for the first time in the show. And since we have so little actual canon-information about him, my imagination kind of went wild and one day, while I was listening to The Killers' _Battle Born_ album, I started writing what ended up becoming this story. I go from Kolivan's childhood years, from his life with his parents, a time with little to no worries, to the Kolivan we have in the show now. It's a slow building process, and my wish is for all of us to go through his life's journey together.
> 
> In regards to warnings, **there will be violence** or violent scenes, with a varying degree of how graphic they are, as well as sad/dark content. I'll add the proper warnings in each update whenever they're needed.  
>  In the first chapter, there is a very short scene after the second break (the "—") that has vague mentions of blood and injuries. It's only two sentences long. If you need me to add specific warnings for it, though, let me know!
> 
> If you read all of this, thank you for taking the time! I hope you enjoy this story!

 

 

**BATTLE BORN**

**1**

 

 

 There are three things that can be summarized as key moments in a young galra’s life:

    The moment you’re presented in society;

    The moment your role in your community is finally defined;

    The moment you find the person you’ll swear to be with for life.  Your mate.

 

 Of course, those three moments are considered to be important enough to determine luck or doom, but that’s only in theory.  When it comes to reality, to the putting in practice of customs and millennial-old laws, their importance isn’t as life-defining as being able to stand your ground and protect those you consider your family.  

 Some go on and about their lives without going through the complex rituals that are included in the process of being presented into society for the first time. Some don’t have determined rolls waiting to be fulfilled to more or less perfection.  Some never find their mates.

 It’s perfect and completely normal.  Some go through other key moments relevant to their own paths and decisions.

 Though the three moments are still held as an ideal.  Some reach and fulfill all three of them, some don’t, and some die trying.

 

 

 Kolivan watches the fields that extend far beyond what his sight can see.  He watches the lowest of the low snarl, fight, break their bones and work. _This is routine._  

 His eyes wash over the land and he tries to remember his mother’s song, tries to think past the mirage of her large form kneeling on the ground, plucking fertilized and fully developed fruits from the dirt, with a smile that challenged every limit conceivable to mind.  His attempts are futile, and so he clutches the hilt of his blade tighter within his closed fist.

 “Kon—,” Antok corrects his slip up without looking the least fazed by it, “Kolivan.  We need to get going.”

 “Yes,” he replies while his eyes trail over the fields once more.  His mother is not there, he knows. She is nowhere. 

 Neither of them look back as they leave the childhood lands behind.

 

—

 

 It happened so long ago, that by the time he was still considered a child, elders talked about it like it was some old tale from the childhoods of their respective elders.  

 Kolivan never corrected them. Never said _“no, it didn’t happen so long ago, it’s still happening today”_ , because he knew nobody would ever want to listen.

 

 His father is still young enough to be forcefully recruited; his mother is, too, but she gathers Kolivan in her arms and runs as fast as her legs allow her to, leaving behind her life and her mate, knowing that days are counted for her.

 “Your name is now Kolivan, you understand?,” she tells him with desperation, her big eyes shining through thick fog and the darkness all around encompassing their surroundings.

 “Yes,” he replies, small hands closed around his mother’s long white braid for comfort, like he always did when distressed.

 “Repeat it, then,” she says, her big hand cupping the back of his head.

 “Kolivan,” the name sounds strange on his mouth—it’s formed with meanings he’s yet to grasp, “my name is Kolivan.”

 “Warrior, my warrior,” her voice is strained now, wavering and tight, “you are battle born.”

 

 She makes him kneel on soil wet from warm rain, and he keeps his back in a straight line, fists closed and posed on his thighs.  She’s standing right in front of him and tilts her head backwards to look at the sky, long braid fluttering in the impassive winds of the crying esztherns.  His eyes wash over her form and his heart hurts in his chest—he’s not young enough (or naive enough) to not know what’s about to happen.

 “ _Starshine of Ýlir, before you a new nascency comes to be,_ ” she whispers into the silence of the night, “ _Njorthr, carry him to the right winds._  Kolivan has come to exist.”

 

 She drops to her knees and lets her fingers sink into the soil.  Anguish is written all over her face, and perhaps she’s regretting the rush and harshness behind her actions, but they both know the finality they hold.  

 So Kolivan reaches out and cups his mother’s face in his hands, guiding her down to his height and letting their foreheads meet. It’s their last moment of peace.

 “Thank you,” he tells her before carefully holding her braid once more and undoing it.  A broken sound erupts from deep within his mother’s chest. “For giving me life.”

 

 A mercurial moon and its companions are still shining up in the darkened sky when he moves to take the road leading to a new luck.  He knew it was going to happen, yet his heart still breaks when his mother doesn’t follow, staying in the doomed path.

 

—

 

 In his eyes there used to be a time you could see more than a firm screen of fortitude.  Whenever he laughed, they would shine so bright and so full of life, even the strongest of shadows would simmer and give in their wake.

 What’s left behind of them?  Does something remain?

 

 He’s barefoot and there are dark, thick rivulets of blood coming down his elbows, dripping in tandem on the hardened soil of the Ánkagsht fields.  He stares at the distorted figure crumpled before him, face torn and stomach turned towards its insides unnaturally. Impassive, he stretches his bruised and battle worn fingers, ignoring the stabbing pain on his knuckles, and begins pressing the pad of the index finger to the other pads one by one.

 When Kolivan lifts his eyes from the barely breathing adversary, the others scurry away from the harshness of the gaze.  Some skitter into the shadows of weeping welcnoxs, sturdy trees that twisted towards the sky, always trying to reach it, yet their branches arch towards the ground, heavy with fruit no galra would ever dare to eat.

 He huffs and walks around the crumpled body to continue his trek towards whatever town this path will take him.  He’s got no determined destination, he only knows there’s no place he can stay. 

 An idle thought crosses his mind: perhaps it’d be wise to invest in any kind of weapon along his never ending journey.  

 That would make defending himself an easier task.

 

—

 

 Sometimes he has turbulent dreams that haunt his waking moments.  

 He doesn’t wake up drenched in sweat or gasping for air; he doesn’t wake up with a distorted scream trapped in his throat, bubbling in his lips.  He claws at the frayed cloths covering his body and kicks out of them, tasting the bitterness of raw impotence right at the base of his tongue and tainting the beginning thread of his thoughts.

 His hair is sticking to the back of his neck—he had gone to sleep right after washing off the grime that came from days spent wandering about, trying to find a hiding spot that would shelter him from the eyes of soldiers and guards.  

 Money is sparse now.  He never had much of it to begin with, but being forced into this life of exile made him realize (by tossing him into a harsher reality) just how much he needed it if he wanted to survive on his own.

 

 The white strands are barely long enough to be tied into a rushed braid, shorter ones falling and framing his face, tickling him behind his ears.  His heart lurches in his chest as he closes his eyes for a moment: all he can see is the last memory he has of his mother, her long white hair flowing freely in the wind right after he undid her longer, more beautiful, braid.  

 From deep within, from a place that he wishes he could hide forever and keep contained in the smallest of shapes, a trembling need arises and it leaves him feeling weak, exposed, lost in a sea of impassive stars.  It’s a weakness he can’t quite shake off, an always resurfacing need that’s dangerous in so many ways that he refuses to admit it out loud.

 But it’s the truth and he can’t always deny it.  

 He misses his mother.

 

 Kolivan has no news of what used to be his village.  No one talks about what happens during the nights every handful of moons; no one talks about the children, the young, the lives the soldiers come to claim like they were in their rightful honor.  Kolivan knows he’s just like thousands of young galras that got lucky and now live to survive each passing day. His story isn’t one in a million, and his life isn’t worth more than anyone else’s.  He knows this. He’s aware of this. It plagues his thoughts and turns his food into bland nothingness that holds no taste.

 Because he’s had to fight to reach this milestone of time spent in the chained freedom of the ones who run.  He has eaten his share of food and watched how others starved at his side. He’s been fast enough to outrun guards and soldiers and he’s been clever enough to find hiding spots that were harder to find.  All around him he’s heard the screams of those who died fighting for these meager scraps of tainted liberty they were lucky enough to get in the first place, he’s heard the screams of those who were dragged away never to be seen again.

 

 His mind runs in circles and he can’t help but wonder: what’s been of his father, what has happened to him?  He was never a fighter, he never thought highly of weapons or war. Is he still alive? It’s cold this night and Kolivan for a moment, for one small, hopeless moment, allows himself to ignore that  _ he is Kolivan now _ , that  _ Kontok  _ died the moment the soldiers destroyed his childhood home and his rebirth welcomed him as an orphan.  

   Is his father surviving somehow?  He wishes he had a way to reach out, to talk to him, to tell him that it’s ok, you can forget, you can live, you can forget mother, you can forget me, just stay alive.   _Just stay alive._

 He wishes he’d had the chance of saying goodbye, he wishes they had been given a little bit more of time.

  And he tries to think of his father holding a weapon, firing it without closing his eyes.  He tries to think of his father living with the heavy weight of watching lives come to their end all around him while he’s the one making it to one more fight.  He tries to, but fails—his father is probably everywhere and nowhere at the same time as he remembers him. He was nothing more than cannon fodder, after all.

 

 The urge to grab his small stolen blade courses through him with a violence that makes him open his eyes and stare at the crumpled wall covering him from any unwanted presence on the other side of the road.  He wants to cut his braid, he wants to… but he will not. It’s a promise he’s made to himself: it’s his way of remembering those who won’t be remembered by anyone else.

 Stories of great wars and battles are written by the winners, by the conquerors, by the ones standing on crushed skulls and blood-drenched fields.  Stories are written by the winners, and the fallen, the lives used like means to an end, the hopes that will never come to be, they hold no place in their tales.  They are left aside, brushed off, ignored and, ultimately, forgotten.

 But Kolivan can make this one promise:

 He will never forget.

 

—

 


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the seasons may pass, but the dream doesn't die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowly but surely, we are getting there

 

 

**BATTLE BORN**

**2**

 

 

 How long has it been since he’s been forced into this life of exile?

 Far behind are the muddy fields where his mother had knelt during their final goodbye.  His past name is a mark upon his soul that no longer burns with the same excruciating intensity as it did once.  

 

—

 

 “ _Kontok_ ,” the stranger seems surprised to see him there, in that dimly lit tavern, dirty bandages on his hands and around his elbows.  “So it was true. You survived the raid.”

 “You must be mistaken,” Kolivan replies with ease, though his voice holds millions of warnings and the twitch of his features betray his thoughts forming retaliation plans, “I’m not Kontok.”

 The stranger eyes him in silence for a moment, sharp gaze flicking to the short and stubby braid falling awkwardly down his nape.

 

 “I see.  I apologize,” he bows his head, large mouth stretching into an impossible grin.  “I’m Antok. May I drink with you?”

 “Do as you wish,” absently, Kolivan notices the tension weighing on his shoulders bleeding away. “I’m Kolivan.”

 If Antok realizes the meanings behind the name, he plays off ignorance with startling ease.

 

—

 

 “Why are you following me?,” Kolivan’s voice is barely above a gruff as they ascend on a particularly steep path, the heat of the midday sun unforgiving across their backs.

 “I’m not following you,” Antok replies with ease, and when Kolivan turns to look at the other he notices that there’s a calm and playful look on his face, “I’m merely walking the same path next to you.”

 “Sounds a lot like following me,” his nose twitches in distaste, though he schools his expression quickly enough, “I thought you were going back to wherever you came from.”

 Antok lets out a breathy chuckle, deep and rumbling, bitter and biting.  “There’s nothing back at the village I came from.”

 

 Kolivan stops for a second, looking at the other even as he passes him.  Absently, he thinks that with such long legs Antok would’ve walked ahead from the get go if he hadn’t been purposely slowing down.  It doesn’t strike him as condescending as it would have some time ago. It only tells Kolivan of how lonely Antok must have felt, having no-one he once knew to walk with.

 They are both wanderers with no beginnings, with no point of return.  There’s nothing left for them to come back to, their homes were torn. He remembers mud on his knees and words bringing him to the world.  Antok turns to look at him, having stopped somewhere ahead, and the look in his eyes betrays nothing.

 “Alright,” Kolivan says then and starts to walk again, the blazing star burning way above them, following their steps.

 

—

 

  The soil is cold and dark. It’s the beginning of the fourth moon and everybody is getting ready for the upcoming festivities. Through the thick fog the lights of tall spiralling buildings shine the narrow passageways and streets. The buildings are tall—they seem to reach the first layer of the atmosphere from his point of view on the ground, clothes clean and eyes sharp, letting the cold of the soil seep through his thickened skin to cool his heated nerves.

   He likes watching the buildings, how their lights change according to the celebrations, how they shimmer like guiding beacons for those who are far away, looking for the path back to civilization.  They twist at the end, on the top levels, with a grace that always makes him want to learn the science behind their structures. The walls are a rich, very dark purple; they seem almost brown. The architectural style is one that hasn’t been in use for decathebes and clashes in unexpected ways with the more modern buildings, though all together they form a pleasing sight.

   Bright purple lights wink in the distance, the remote thrumming of traditional songs booms in his veins and makes his heart seize for a moment.  The celebrations have begun, he hasn’t been called in this moon and neither the previous one, or the one before that. Foolishly, hopefully, he always gets ready and dons his ceremonial garments, though the appearance of his name in the public lists never happens.  He wonders if it ever will. Maybe he’s like his mother’s uncle’s father, never to be officially introduced, set free of societal expectations that come with class and ranks but never free of prejudice and a sense of not being part of the core. Theoretically, there’s no reason for him to be punished that way; he hasn’t done anything aggravating, he hasn’t sought to break the rules, instead abiding by them and doing what is right.

   His mother walks past him and smiles encouragingly.

 

   “You look regal,” she grins, woven casket of thick green branches held in one arm, pressed to her hip.  The sweet smell coming from it lets him now it must be filled to the brim with his favorite fruit. “Come on now, Kontok.  Go change into ordinary clothes. Next moon will be your moon.”

   “Why didn’t they call me this time?,” he asks instead, and perhaps he’s sulking— _he’s definitely sulking_ , but he thinks maybe his mother doesn’t notice.  “Why don’t they ever call me?”

   “You know the answer,” she steps closer to him and cocks her head to the side, looking down at him, where he’s still lying on the ground, “it’s not your time”

   “What if it’ll never be my time?,” Kontok sits up hastily at that, crossing his arms over his chest and not quite meeting his mother’s gaze.

 

   A deep rumbling laughter sounds from somewhere behind him and it makes heat bloom in his cheeks.

   “Why would it never be your time?,” his father asks then and his voice lets it be known that he finds the mere idea ludicrous, “It’s never too late for anything.  Galras of all ages are called every moon, you know this very well, Kontok.”

   He lowers his gaze at that, fixing his eyes on his lap as he fiddles with his hands.  He _knows_ they are right.  He knows it well enough.

   “There’s always a new moon to look up to.  Come on now, let’s help your mother prepare the food.”

 

—

 

   The town is clear before their eyes, cutting the line of the horizon with its tall buildings and the large dome in the very center of it.  Kolivan suppresses a shudder as he leans for a moment (just one moment, he tells himself, he tells his tired muscles) against the rugged trunk of the edchnok.  Walking such a steep path under such unforgiving heat had really wrung the energy out of his body.

   “Are you alright?,” Antok stops at his side and looks down at him, a hint of worry obvious in his voice.

   “Thirsty,” Kolivan admits, pushing away from the tree and beginning to talk again, sight focused on the town in front of them slowly growing larger and larger, “Hopefully we’ll find somewhere to rest soon.”

   “We?,” Antok muses, smiling now that the other can’t see him now, “Until not too long ago you wanted me gone.”

 

   There’s a beat of silence between them before Kolivan looks over his shoulder, parting his lips and ready to form a reply when his blood freezes in horror:

   A military group is coming their way, quickly approaching.

   And they are already on their sights.

 

 

—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few of my hcs that appeared in this (and the previous) chapter:  
> *The termination /-tok/ in names is used solely for "masculine" names, and it does have a meaning on its own ("glory")  
> *"Kolivan" means "battle born", the "ko" part comes from an abbreviation of the galran equivalent for "battle". The "n" part of the name is there purely for phonetics reasons. "Kotok" as a name exists as well. It's a variation of "Kontok" used in other regions  
> *Kontok means "glory of battle"  
> *The raid happened when Kolivan was around 8 - 11 in human years.  
> *Antok goes on a personal mission to find survivors from his village, and he finds Kolivan (who's around 18-19) in a tavern when he was actually looking for someone else. They were on their own till that moment, fighting and living off whatever they could find, constantly hiding because they are afraid of being forcefully recruited/being treated as deserters/defectors.  
> *The galran army recruits young soldiers forcefully, especially from backwater galran planets/towns/cities, because those tend to be what for us would be "poor" regions. The soldiers coming from those regions are cannon fodder.
> 
> If anyone wants to ask me anything about these of my other hcs that haven't appeared yet, you can contact me on [tumblr](http://wajjs.tumblr.com)!

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://wajjs.tumblr.com) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/wajjs_)


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